ad initium
by lydiamartins
Summary: The somewhat aimless account of how Calypso fell in love with Leo Valdez.-—Calypso/Leo, for Jo.


**title: **ad initium  
**characters: **Calypso, Leo Valdez, Rachel Elizabeth Dare  
**summary:** The somewhat aimless account of how Calypso fell in love with Leo Valdez.-—Calypso/Leo, for Jo.  
**a/n: **HAPPY THIRTEENTH BIRTHDAY JO-i'm really sorry i didn't write something for you sooner, but summer's been pretty busy. this story starts from the end and each scene goes back in time back to the very beginning where they met. it's an AU but there's still the gods, and everything else and i'm sorry that this sucks and how OC everything is. also warning for spag errors.  
**disclaimer: **i don't own anything besides the story idea; the original characters and everything else belong to Rick Riordan.  
**dedication: **HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY JO (and this is also for you at gge, augusti)  
**prompt: **Leo/Calpyso

...

ACT III: THE END

...

This is how she ends:

With a dent in her skull, the ghost of his name on her lips, and the Golden Fleece draped across her body.

...

After they've broken up, they still see each other: after all, the world isn't as big of a place as people amount it to be. She's always in hiding these days-the Gods won't notice that she's escaped Ogygia for at least a decade, and she'll have to go back eventually, but that's inevitable; or maybe it's not. Their conversations are full of awkward small talk and glances of aching longing, longing for what used to be, and then hasty, quick departures and occasional handshakes and quick embraces, pats on the back.

This is how it ends:

"You have to leave," she says flatly.

It's spoken in a matter-of-fact tone, because Calypso's spent hours thinking about this; more importantly, she's spent years going through scenarios almost exactly the same as this one, except maybe, this is the first time she isn't recycling words and heartfelt gestures. A light breeze blows upon the sand of Ogygia, and a wooden raft bobs up and down near the shore. Any moment now, Hermes will show up with the familiar recycled words.

He hems and haws and then says, "Yes."

Or:

"You have to leave," he says flatly.

They're sitting on the edge of a light blue bed in their apartment—_it's just his apartment now, not yours anymore, _Calypso remembers to remind herself, because the decision had already been made, and it wasn't in her favour after all—and she stares at the walls. A few months back, they had painted the whole place together. She had spent hours to find a colour that looked like the sky, and not like the ocean (because the ocean, the ocean is deep and dark and at the floor, one finds the truth they haven't wanted to acknowledge). Leo didn't understand the difference.

The two of them had painted the place in ratty t-shirts and paintbrushes Rachel had dropped off; the t-shirts used to have been this ugly off-white color before Leo wouldn't stop flicking paint at her face and then she tackled him revenge, and then...well. _I like the walls, _she had told him, repeatedly; Calypso had a fascination with repeating the same words every day, hoping that if she said them enough, they wouldn't fade anyway into oblivion like everything else these days. "They're waiting for you: the Titans," Leo continues.

"You could come too." Her voice is hopeful, but it's a lie. Leo has no place among the Titans, at least not according to them; Atlas had decided that he would be a distraction for her, and the choice was that she left him or that, ironically, he was burned to ashes. She hems and haws and then says, "Yes."

(Either way, it doesn't matter what happened: it still ends)

...

Against all odds, Leo manages to find a way to Ogygia.

Calypso never doubted him (or, at least, that's what she'll tell him).

...

ACT II:

She's sitting on the edge of her bed when the messenger of the Gods comes in. "What do you want?" Calypso speaks blankly, tired tone, and stares outside of the makeshift window-her family is being torn to pieces, and Atlas stares pleadingly over the landscape, wondering what had gone wrong over all these years-and all Calypso can think is _not again_. "And if you say that you want me to come with you, then screw it, I'm not."

"Okay," Hermes shrugs. "I'll just teleport you there."

The Pantheon of Gods is smaller and much of a weaker force than it once was-there is Hermia, who is reciting words of Latin off of a scripture book, and looks at her, speaking in an oddly calm tone.

"Calypso, daughter of Atlas the Titan, you are sentenced back to Ogygia, for the remainder of your lifetime."

And then, she is there-it is barren, the same way she had once found the place, and Calypso is reluctant to spend hundreds of years building up a place of Paradise for it to come crashing down oncemore; _at least this time, _she reminds herself, _you won't fall in love. You know better than to fall in love; love will always end, and time never will. _

Hundreds of years later, Ogygia still looks the same; then again, so does she.

...

She visits him a few times during her stay in the mountains of Switzerland. "It's wonderful," Calypso tells Leo; she's lost track of what day it is, but it doesn't really matter, because time is infinite these days, literally for her, metaphorically for him. "There's Golden Apples and things that feel like Golden Fleeces, and course, I know it's not the real thing, but it's sort of like Paradise."

He laughs, "I didn't think that living with the Titans would be like that."

She scowls, "So you thought that it would be living in hell?"

"Basically," Leo shrugs, but then hastens to clarify. "Only because I've lived in hell before."

"High school isn't hell." She rolls her eyes. "You should come visit sometime; I've visited you at least ten times-"

"Five, actually." The first time, she had to leave a few minutes later-one of Atlas's thousands of spies had found her bed empty; the second time, the morning bell at Camp had rung and Leo's half-siblings had returned, the third time, she had ended up trapped in the in-between and for what felt like three hours, nobody could hear her; the fourth time, there was somebody else already there; the fifth time was too short.

"Same difference. But you should come. I told Atlas about you and he's sort of okay with everything; of course, he's still on his plan to destroy Mount Olympus, but he promised he won't destroy you."

Leo squints. "You even sound like you're lying."

"I'm not," Calypso attempts to speak in the most confident tone possible. It's a skill that she's sort of mastered over the past thousands of years-being stuck on Ogygia for three thousand years allowed for her to talk to nobody but herself (and occasionally the plants and the rivers, but the plants seemed to respond sometimes), allowed for that happen, and then suddenly, being released by her father, and sent into some sort of Protection Program.

For a moment, they are a simply a boy and a girl, sitting on the edge of a cliff, terribly in love, and then the moment passes and as time goes on, so do they.

...

He is a boy, but people act as though he is a demon. She is a girl, but people act as though she is a siren.

(In fact, they are neither: he is a demigod, and she is the daughter of a Titan, and he is a boy, and she is a girl, but then again, they have never been fans of simplicity.)

...

It becomes a common theme between them: leaving, that is.

Calypso drops out of high school mid-senior year, a few days after college applications have been submitted, and simply shrugs when Leo brings the topic up. "I don't see the point of going to college." Atlas had contacted her a few weeks before, and summoned her to mountains in Switzerland, making promises of family and greatness and retribution. "Plus, I won't miss homework and lectures and all that other nonsense."

"Then why'd you go to high school?" Leo finds himself asking, already knowing the answer. A small part of him feels jealous-his mother is dead, his father never has time for him-but a much larger part knows common sense, that there's an astronomical different between the Gods and the Titans, and therefore, the children of the Gods and the children of the Titans, and part of him will never understand Calypso, no matter how hard he's tried to.

She laughs. "Same reason you did; I had nowhere else to go." She moves closer for a moment, and embraces him quickly and tightly. "We'll see each other soon, I promise. We'll be able to make this long-distance relationship thing work." In her mind are statistics; 70 percent of long-distance relationships don't work when people aren't ready for changes, but they're ready for changes-after everything that they've been through, they've had to known that change is going to always be there, sometimes more prevalent than others, but there's communication breakdown, of course.

Calypso's not expecting to be able to talk to Leo every day, let alone have face-to-face contact with him. Atlas wouldn't allow it. Atlas doesn't even know who Leo is. Atlas has probably already promised her to some skeevy Titan kid. And, how long with it take? This whole thing with moving to the mountains of Switzerland, it could be forever. The whole retribution plan to take over Mount Olympus isn't something that's going to happen during Leo's lifetime-_I'm not going to be immortal, _he kept on telling her. _There's nothing good about being immortal._-and sometimes she thinks about that.

Because giving up being human is perhaps the biggest sacrifice a human could make (not really, if she thinks hard enough about it, but she likes for her thoughts to be poetic and natural, and she's getting there, one step at a time), and Leo couldn't do that, not even for her. So, she leaves.

Leo gets offered a year-round place at Camp Half-Blood and leaves after getting accepted into Stanford. Sometimes, at night, restless in the bedsheets smelling of ash, he thinks of what life could have been like at college: making new friends, going crazy, playing that whole mind game about lying to friends about how much you study, and the like, and then thinks of Camp: your family is your friends, being Cabin Conseulor, getting to work in the forges every day, and knows that everything here is worth the minute sacrifices he had to make.

Only on the 4th of July, when the Annual Dance is occurring, he thinks, _I miss you._

...

Rowan is a sturdy sort of guy, the type who will love her forever, not because he loves her, but because that's the type of person he is. He doesn't fall in love, and makes up for it with flimsy words and stern nods, and is a typical Titan son, and her father honestly doesn't understand why that isn't the type of guy she wants to marry. "He's a good boy," Atlas tells her for the thousandth time.

She rolls her eyes, leaning back in a metal chair; if she had known that this would be what her father had wanted to talk to her about, she would have rather stayed at school for the rest of the three-day week. Anything but this: marriage proposals. "Nope."

"I'll get you the Golden Fleece." Calypso shakes her head. "As much money as you want."

"I don't want to marry Rowan. He's thirty years older than me!" _And at least ten feet taller than me, _she thinks.

Her father speaks snidely. "When you're three thousand and twenty-seven years old, you have to start lowering your expectations. Thirty years is nothing. Your mother Pleione is two hundred years younger than I am."

"I still can't get over the fact that she's your _cousin_."

"Caly-"

"And you married her!"

"Good grief, Calyps-"

"Isn't that like cousincest or something-"

"ENOUGH! You know what, I'm just sick of you. Do what you want to do."

She smiles. "Good."

...

Three weeks passes by before Atlas contacts her-perhaps, he's the most distant father figure that exists, but then again, so are the Gods to their demigod children-and at first, Calypso's confirmed that this is some sick joke from one of the other campers at Half-Blood. She doesn't go there, of course, but she's heard tales of the place from Leo who talks about the place like it's Paradise on Earth. He shows up outside of her dorm building in the disguise of a teenager-he looks surprisingly like Apollo, and the only difference is the easygoing, albeit slightly arrogant attitude, between the two of them. "You haven't returned my calls."

"I haven't received any," she speaks cautiously, remembering her position. _Respect for elders and stuff like that-more appropriately, actually, it's just easier to fear people and they'll mistake it for respect. _"Did you send any Iris messages?"

He grunts. "Do you think that I could send Iris messages? The Titans are in hiding."

Calypso shrugs, letting the straps of her backpack curl around her fingers, scratching the nail polish off the insides of her nails, crumb pieces falling onto the cracked sidewalk, wherein small sprouts of grasses and weeds grow. "I didn't know that. I just thought that you guys were, uh, busy."

"You'll be coming back."

"_What?_"

"You've been away from your family for too long. You should have come back long back; whenever you escaped from that island of yours, Ogygia wasn't that the time?" She nods. "You should have come back to where you thought that we were, or at least try to contact us. We're your family, Calypso, and family is much more important than these stupid friends of yours."

She speaks cautiously, "I did go back. Nobody was there."

Twenty minutes later, when she shows up late to AP Biology, Calypso tells Leo that she's going on a family reunion for the rest of the three-day week-_yes, in Switzerland, didn't you know that I'm Swedish?_-and hopes that he understands what she means (aka, if I'm not back in two weeks, I'm gone).

...

Their first anniversary was a six-month one, and it went like:

She wakes up alone, curled up in stiff sheets and stared at the bright red clock reading 3AM. In her locker, Leo had managed to sneak in a fresh bouquet of roses-they're not her favourite flower, not even close, but Calypso appreciates the gesture-and Hazel had questioned her about it. "I think you have a secret admirer," Hazel had said, a convincing look on her face. "You dating anyone?"

"Sort of," she says, head throbbing from the smell of the flowers. They're overly scented, trying too hard.

"You're a horrible friend for not telling me." Then, after a pause, "Aren't you going to make up for being a horrible friend by filling me in on everything right now?"

She sighs. "We're keeping it a secret...for now."

Hazel scrunches her nose. "Are you dating an older guy? Is he _married_? Calypso, I know you're old, but please-"

"_No_."

"Then who is it?" (and on, and on, and on).

Leo enters the history classroom, with his usual entourage, and doesn't make eye contact like he usually does.

Calypso gives the flowers to Hazel and tells herself it's because the smell gives her a migraine.

Their second anniversary is a one-year thing and it goes like this:

The date goes almost perfect, they share a hefty piece of chocolate cake with the tasty vanilla frosting in a public restaurant in the middle of town, the fancy type that you need reservations for and costs extravagant amounts of money but still has amazing food at the same time, (the real kind, not just the frothy one that looks nice and is low in calories but tastes like mineral water) and a kiss at her doorstep before he bids her goodbye.

...

Frank corners Calypso (simply because Jason is still avoiding her) when Hazel is changing, and Calypso feels something akin to anxiety building up in her stomach as she fidgets with her hands and fakes a lopsided smile.

The sound his military boots make when they move across the carpet contrast with the chub in his cheeks, but his eyes are stern most of the time these days-they used to be lighthearted. She misses that. Calypso's scared of him even when he's not trying to be threatening (actually, when he's trying to be threatening, it's absolutely hilarious most of the time; she bursts into laughter, Hazel admonishes her and promptly bursts into laughter, and Frank scowls at both of them), and she thinks it's because of his eyes and the secrets that he keeps behind their gradual blankness. "So," he nods, hands in pockets. "How's Leo doing?"

She blinks twice, too fast. "He's good. We're nearly done with our lab write-up."

"Partners aren't supposed to do lab write-ups together. It's on the syllabus."

"Oh."

"He's engaged, you know."

Calypso sighs. "He's not engaged, Frank. He was promised to somebody he can't even remember-"

"But he doesn't know that. That he's engaged, I mean. And you know it. And you didn't tell him. Imagine what would happen if somebody told him about that, that you were keeping this from him. The two of you don't seem to keep secrets from each other. Just from everybody else."

"There's no _us_," she fidgets, almost screams, and then reads between the lines, and narrows her eyes. "You wouldn't."

He shrugs, "I've got nothing to lose."

"How about the breaking down of your friends? People having to take sides-"

"I'm tired of the lies, Calypso. At first, I thought that it would be just one lie, but then you kept on and kept on lying and maybe it's because you're the daughter of a Titan, it's in your genes to lie-"

She hears the sharp sound before she recognizes what she's done, and sees the bright crimson mark on his left cheek and the stinging of her right one. Hazel walks down the back staircase, looking radiant in a custom-made golden gown and almond-coloured hair curled upon her shoulders.

"Calypso won't be able to join us. She has a prior commitment and has to go now."

He walks past her and snakes an arm around Hazel's waist, and looks very much the admonishing father figure she never had. After a while, Hazel's questioning expression (and all Calypso think is how did Hazel, the girl who died and then was resurrected get her life in better order than herself, the three-thousand and something year old immortal) gets a bit too much, and she leaves.

...

"Are you ashamed of me?" She acts him on a Tuesday, resting her head on his shoulder, curled up on the futon.

"Why would you say that?" is his response, accompanied by a yawn.

"We're still a secret."

_Lab write-up, _she traces in her assignment notebook. The ink of her favourite pen is fading and she scratches the pen a little harder to leave some sort of an imprint in the lab notebook, and when Calypso looks onto the COPY page of the carbonless notebook, there's barely a stain left there. No matter how hard she tries, it never ends up turning out clearly. Life's a mess like that. "You know why-"

"Frank and Hazel are friends with me, sort of." Hazel's more of her friend than Frank is; whenever Hazel's absent, Frank makes small talk with her, simply for niceties, but he has other friends and so does she-of course Isabelle has a more complicated life than she has herself, what with her father running off with a Senator's wife, and her mother having to marry the Senator as part of a legal argument, and her own boyfriend leaving her because the publicity was too much, and the drinking problem hadn't gotten better over the years-so that's that. "So you are ashamed of me."

"I never said that, and I'm not."

"Then why can't we-"

(and repeat, and repeat and repeat.)

...

The first time they kiss, it's an accident.

If Calypso thinks about it, the actual kiss didn't matter-because it was awkward and she smelled like strawberries and he smelled like ashes but it was something real, of course, and then it was over-but what happened after: Hazel bursting into the foster home, and rambling on and on, a mile in minute about something called the Prophecy of Seven.

Rachel, the new Oracle, recites the words with a hazed over expression and vivid blue eyes, a greenish sort of mist surrounding her. "_Seven half-bloods shall answer the call, To storm or fire, the world must fall, An oath to keep with a final breath, And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death_," and promptly collapses onto the sandy beach, Blackjack, staring at the nine of them with as much of a grim expression as a Pegasi can muster.

"So," twenty minutes later, Rachel is the first one to manage something out. "What'd did I miss?"

"Doors of Death," Annabeth mutters. "I've heard that somewhere-"

"The personal gateways used by the death god Thanatos' to enter and exit the Underworld; they're controlled by Gaea, goddess of the Earth."

"Greek Goddess of the Earth," Reyna corrects. "_Greek_."

Jason sighs. "Is this really the time for that?"

"Somebody's going to die," Calypso offers. The other eight stare at her blankly. "Well, it's true. Somebody's going to die. Somebody always dies." After a moment's pause, "Right?"

"It's true, but we try not to think like that."

Apollo shrugs, in his teenage form. "Prophecies like this-some of them don't actually happen for centuries. They won't happen in your lifetime. Maybe yours, Calypso."

"_Thanks._"

...

(Two and a half miles across town, he turns in his sheets; they have become thinner and thinner over the years, losing their quality, but it's either better food or better bedsheets, so it's quite obvious what decision to make. At night, the prophecy of seven reverbrates in his mind-_I'm a loner, an outcast, _he thinks. _I'm not the type of guy who's in prophecies: I'm not a hero._ Maybe the god of dreams, whatever the guy's name is, would let him have a restful sleep, just for once.)

...

Calypso's always wanted to play the piano well.

When she presses her fingers onto the keys, she never lifts her fingers quickly enough, and her hands are long enough to reach from a middle C to a high F, but it's nothing extraordinary, and even when she masters a song, it sounds like notes, nothing more-it emits sounds of bores, and she loves piano so much; she puts everything into it, and it gives her nothing.

Leo's good at it-he's always tapping his fingers, and plays the piano as though it is a creature waiting to become alive, and most of the time, she hates him for it.

...

The two of them are sitting in the middle of the library, ensconced by bookshelves that smell of cinnamon and ginger, a smell that Calypso likes to think is associated with death; life, she thinks, should smell more like fresh nectarines and sunshine. "Hazel should be here by now," she drawls out, staring down at her cellphone and the 0 NEW TEXT MESSAGES screen that keeps popping up whenever she tries to refresh the text messages. "She promised that she would help me with this project."

See, here's the thing: she keeps thousands of newspapers, for no other reason than it is what Alexander used to do, and she does not wish for his memory, for his words to fade with time, but they will eventually, Calypso knows. SEOUL and BEIJING and PARIS and NEW YORK CITY are the labels on tops of newspapers, in large capital letters of cursive handwriting, and Leo gapes at the stacks and stacks. "We don't need that many newspapers," he speaks quickly. "Calypso, you have a newspaper from the time of the what, the time of the Romans?!"

"It was my brother's," she speaks quietly. "You're worrying for no reason-nobody'll suspect a thing. I can just say that I collect newspapers."

"These aren't newspapers, these are artifacts."

She rolls her eyes. "I just thought that these would help us get a better grade; Where is Hazel? She would be grateful for these papers."

"I never invited her," he admits, looking down.

"Oh."

...

"We're not doing this project," Calypso says, reaching for her phone.

Leo snatches the phone out of her hand. "Tell Isabelle that her emergency can wait. This is due in a few days."

"It's due two weeks from now."

"Didn't think that you were paying attention, what with your constant texting. You could get a detention-"

"And then I wouldn't get into college," she snaps. "I know, I know. I still have my sob story though."

Leo raises an eyebrow, and she continues.

"Being an orphan and all. My mom's somewhere, I haven't talked to my dad in like three thousand years-"

"Stop exaggerating, Calypso," he says, with less annoyance, more caution, which is stupid because he's always hated when people talk with him in that sort of tone, but he can't help himself sometimes. It's just human nature, Leo thinks.

"I'm not," she faces him, earnestly. "I haven't talked to him in three thousand years."

"That's not possible," he's quick to reply.

"You know that it is," she replies, wryly.

He laughs, uncomfortably. "Immortality isn't true. If it is, then vampires are real, and oh God, you're an Edward Cullen."

She snorts, "That's insulting."

"You're serious, then?"

"We already went over this."

"Shut up."

"So," he starts, excitedly. "You're an immortal demi-god? I've read about that, the legends and such, and most of them are dead by now, killed by the Titans and all, but I didn't think that any of them were actually real."

Calypso smiles sadly, "Something like that."

...

"I hate chem."

He laughs. "Everybody loves chemistry. Chemistry has jokes."

"Stop it."

"What do you do with a sick chemist?"

Her lips curve into something akin to a smile, and he continues, "If you can't helium, and you can't curium, then you might as well barium."

She looks at him, smile fading.

"It's a joke," he speaks earnestly.

Calypso scowls, "I don't like jokes." Then, she bursts into laughter. "God, that was horrible."

He smiles, lopsided. "It's supposed to be."

...

Calypso sits, legs separated past the customary three inches, toes tapping on the floor, buried beneath thick fluffy socks and blue ballet fats; she's hunched over, typing frantically on the computer, stopping now and then, leaning back in her mahogany-coloured chair and nodding her head, eyes flicking around the room speculatively. "We should get to work on this project," Leo, with his tan leather messenger bag, drops into the seat next to her, and nods.

"I can do the project myself," she snaps back. "I don't understand why we weren't given the option of individual assignments: we're always given that option," and then stops herself, because she's already said too much.

"I'm not moving," he stares at her, earnest, and she flinches under his gaze. "So," Leo drawls out, "what do you want to do for the project?

She sighs. "Honestly, I don't know. What is the project, anyways?"

"Are you serious?"

Calypso rolls her eyes, "No, I'm Calypso, not Sirius."

"Very funny."

"I don't try to be. But, yeah, guess I am."

"It's for chemistry. Labs for the rest of the school year, or at least first semester; I'm new to this school, you see-"

"I don't care about your life story. Just tell me what I have to do, and I'll do it, you'll do your part, and we'll be on our way to never having to speak to each other again."

"Uh, did I do something wrong? Because I don't know anything I've done to make you hate me."

"You're a boy," she states plainly. "I'm not allowed to talk to boys."

"You're talking to me."

"Unfortunately."

"Then, how am I supposed to do this; how are we supposed to do this lab?"

"My dad'll bribe the teacher and I'll get to do labs by myself."

"Seriously?"

"No, I'm Calypso-"

"That's not funny anymore."

...

ACT I:

He doesn't know the name Calypso yet—later, she thinks, it was better that way.

High school's started up back in the city, but it's not as though Leo has the option of leaving Camp Half-Blood, especially not with the fact that his social worker wouldn't possibly find him a while, not after the fireball stunt he had pulled at the last foster home. Three more years, he reminds himself. Three more years until you're eighteen, and then you're out.

The town is something out of a messed-up fairytale: it is full of gated communities and burroughs, and brick mansions that range from seven thousand square feet up; there are curving bannisters and butterfly staircases, granite islands and sunroom extensions, girls in pretty white dresses and little boys in golf uniforms, and everything looks like it's something out of Stepford, Conneticut.

This is how his first day of high school started:

Surrounded by maids and butlers running around him, leaving a silver breakfast tray on top of the desk, zipping up his backpack themselves with custom-made journals and fountain pens he would lose within a few hours, and stuffing him with food until he felt he was going to throw up-the Montblancs were a particularly affectionate foster family, the best he had ever lived with.

He walked into the limosuine with three other foster children and became enrolled at private school.

This is how his second first day of high school started:

Empty, alone, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead at 3AM in the morning. He stands up from the bed, his back cracking uncomfortably, and reaching for a pair of broken glasses by the side of his bed.

Lee sits by the window for hours, staring into the prim and proper town he already hates, until there comes a small knock from the door, and then, "Leo."

"Come in," he is bound to say. Company is the least thing that he wants right now; school's staring in a few hours

His foster sister shuffles into the room, hair tousled and bags under eyes hastily covered with foundation two shades too dark. "You're up?"

He shrugs, "Couldn't sleep."

"You should be excited. You just have a few more years to go until you're free of this crap place."

"_Nyssa_."

She raises an eyebrow, "So you're saying that this place isn't crap?"

"It's better than New Orleans."

"New Orleans was actual shit," she wrinkles her noise.

"Living on the streets is better, then?"

"If I was allowed to."

"You don't have to go to school if you don't want to."

"I like school," she says. "It's nice: this whole is nice. Suspiciously nice, if you know what I mean. Have you thought about that?"

"I don't try to think," Leo cracks a chance smile. "It interferes with being nuts."

Nyssa rolls her eyes. "You're not nuts, Leo. You know why."

"Yeah, I know. What I don't know is why we can't live at Camp year-round."

"You know why."

"No, I don't."

-goes to school

"Calypso, Leo."

The primer lets out a groan, and moves reluctantly to a lab table near the back of the room; she traces a Lewis dot structure on the palm of her hand, the graphite digging holes into layers of skin. Calypso fishes through her pencil case for a suspicious looking food, and chews on it, biting down the almonds despite the way the food cuts into her steel braces-pain reminds her of being human: it's a nice feeling. "Hello," he nods.

"I don't like you," she says in a matter-of-fact tone, shifting her seat as far away from his as possible. "I don't."

Leo smiles wryly; he's used to people not liking him. "We're partners for chemistry lab for the rest of sophomore year. You don't have to like me. This isn't the Marriage Project."

...

OR:

...

Sophomore year is before they know each other; the name Calypso is something out of fairytales, but it is harsh and acrid and spins webs of lies and hatred on his tongue, and beneath that, something of confusion and surprise, something Leo's never been quite fond of. He meets her at a party, of all places, and it's a mistake, too, one of those back-to-school events.

He's fingering a red cup and tracing his fingers, dipping them, really, in the liquid, and letting them dance over his tastebuds—it's an overwhelming numbing feeling, to be honest, and not something he particularly enjoys. "Hiii," a girl crashes into him, overly drunk. "You're not drinking," she pouts. "You should drink up, it makes everything a lot easier."

"To be honest, drinking doesn't make the problems go away: it just makes you forget, but only for a while—"The girl throws up on him, and Leo winces slightly, reaching for some napkins and following her outside. "Uh," he pauses, turning around. "Do you need help, or something? Maybe some water? It's not safe for you to be alone, especially at a party like this—"

"There you are!" Another girl, one with caramel hair, milky skin, and almond-coloured eyes approaches, crossing her arms. "God, Isabelle," she grabs one of the drunk girl's arms and hoists it over her shoulder, "I can't believe that you were drinking so much. Isn't anybody taking care of you? It's your birthday party, for goodness sake, you're not supposed to be wasted." Leo coughs, acknowledging his presence, and Calypso looks up, and scoffs. "Did you get her wasted?"

Leo's eyes widen. "I didn't do anything! Your friend's the one who got wasted just fine herself, and threw up on me."

"Listen, Isabelle, are you okay?" She turns back to Leo, scowl intensified. "Look, you need to keep your hands off of her." Even then, Calypso smells like rose and sandalwood: her own personal scent.

Isabelle smiles broadly and flings her arms open wide, and spins, the sparkles of her dress illuminated in the darkening of natural light. "Calypso!"

Walking away, Calypso shakes her head, and Leo follows, partly because he's sort of drunk and partly because he's completely bored. "Trying to take advantage of her before school starts. And she's drunk, too. Come on, Isabelle," the two of them walk into the back seat of a limosuine.

Isabelle giggles and waves, "Bye, Liam!"

...

Either way, it doesn't matter what happened: it still begins.

...

BEFORE

...

Ogygia is an escape from the confusion, and that is all.

It is not a paradise, it is not some sort of messed-up Eden, it is not a prison: it is comfort.

(As time passes, however, Calypso becomes convinced that it is her own personalized version of hell.)

...

She gets married twice in her life-once when she is twenty-five years old, once she is in her late thousands, and finally acquiesces to her father's commands, simply because she is tired of falling in love with people who are bound to die, she is tired of not being in control of anything, tired of the words that are inevitable, circulating around her mind and imprinting themselves in her ink-stained hands.

Logan is a proper sort of boy: he is good to her. He loves the words and she tries to love them for him.

He reads through Aristotle's works and languages she cannot interpret, and wins recognition from the townspeople; and if there were awards of the time, he would have won them all. Logan is something of fame throughout Western Europe; Calypso becomes a housewife for three years, simply because this is what women of the time are reduced to, and wears a thin blue veil around her face and conservative clothing and hates it immediately-there is nothing marvelous about cooking and cleaning and praying to the Gods, something that she does with reluctance-Logan and her often fight about it. "They are the Gods, how could you not pray to them?"

"I just don't see the point," she speaks cautiously; the truth is not something for Logan's ears. He doesn't even know her heritage, the most important thing about her, Alexander used to say. "Of praying to the Gods, I mean. They're not doing anything wonderful for me-"

"You're going to curse this family."

(and on, and on, and on.)

And somewhere along the days, Calypso doesn't remember when she fell in love with him-it takes ten years for him to notice that something's wrong with her, that she's not aging, that she can't have children, and she is cast out onto the streets. Telling him the truth isn't worth a life of false promises and seclusion from the rest of the world, hidden away like a mistake.

Here's the most important thing:

Calypso's not quite sure how any of this happened.

...

Alexander dies on one of the many dies that makes up life-in the morning, Calypso wakes up to scrawled notes and a golden sword by her bedside, and a small piece of peppermint-flavoured chocolate, and smiles broadly, and then stops, and wonders if it is poisoned. She lets her tongue run over the flavour, and devours the sweet within seconds and leaps up from her bedsheets running to Alexander's tent to thank him for this gift.

Instead, she finds his body mutilated, chopped up into pieces, some missing, others evaporating into dust, combusting into pools of fire and flame, and all that remains after the test combusts is his right forearm and elbow, upon which is a silver bracelet, the words of the family crest emblazoned and burned onto the silver, and Calypso removes it slowly, as though if she takes it away too quickly, he shall wake up and slap her for her impudence, takes all the supplies she thinks she'll need-_pack lightly, _she remembers her brother's words-and runs away.

...

"Zeus. Hera." At the age of ten, he makes her recite the names of those who have destroyed them, have led them to living in the streets like common beggars, nameless figures among others nameless figures-they are nothing, and once upon a time, they were so great, the Titans were forces to be reckoned with, and now Atlas has gone into hiding with the remaining Titans scattered across the world, and sometimes, at night, he stares down at his sister, weak thing that she is, and knows that this is all that is left of the Titan race. "Hermes," Calypso flinches. "All the Gods."

"Which Gods?" He prompts.

"I don't understand why I need to know their names," she whines, and Alexander wonders how far he could have gone-he is handsome, he knows that much, and his skin is pale as paper-he could go far in this world-without a child by his side, constantly needing to be reassured and clothed and taken care of.

"When I was your age-"

"I'm not you."

He speaks sharply, "Obviously. You need to know the names of the Gods-and do not speak of them as though they are reverent beings. They are the ones who have destroyed us. They have killed your family, they have sent our brave father into hiding, and he will never come back, and he will never know who he is because of them. Haven't you ever wanted to know your father?" She nods.

"What about my mother?"

Alexander doesn't answer. "Continue."

There is a brush of wind from outside; Alexander stares down at the pile of newspapers in front of him; they proclaim festivals and celebrations for the Gods, and not for the first time, he wants to burn down these Romans who believe that everything they have is because of the Gods, and perhaps that is the truth, that the Gods have blessed up, and Alexander feels the envy burning down his limbs because these are mere humans, and his mother was a Queen, and she is dead now, because the Gods commanded so. "Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Hephaestus, Hestia, Demeter, Dionysus."

"And what have they done to us? Who have they cost us?"

She slumps her shoulders, and repeats.

...

When she was young, Calypso traveled the world with a brother; when she is born:

"This is your sister," a thin man with royal garb tells him. "The mother died before she was given a name."

Alexander knows that this is a lie; he remembers standing by his mother's bedside in the sweltering heat, the blood guts of mess that life has turned out to be, and have her whisper words in his ear: _this is your sister, and her name is Calypso, and she will be wonderful, just like you, _and then she let out a series of shattering screams, and he was ushered out of the tent and a group of midwives entered inside.

He remembers his father, Atlas, who had begged the Gods for help, went down on his knees and prayed for them to help him, help his wife, and their replies of silence-_we do not help the Titans, _one of the faceless men had said-and in that moment, hates them even more than he hates his sister.

She is a small thing, perhaps useless, bits of auburn hair as stub on top of her nearly bald head, but in her eyes is his mother, and he knows that he cannot sell her because of that: they are together now, for better or for worse.


End file.
